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Thursday, July 21, 2005
Another metric Rummy doesn't want to report
How many trained Iraqi soldiers are there? Depends on what you mean by "trained". If "trained" means something like "capable of fighting insurgents without U.S. hand-holding" then the answer from the Pentagon is close to 0:
Nearly two-thirds of the new Iraqi army units are only "partially capable" of fighting rebels - and only then with US help, while up to half of Iraq's new police forces cannot carry out their duties, according to a Pentagon assessment reported in the New York Times .
The article claims that only "a small number" of Iraqi security forces are able to fight insurgents alone.
The assessment, which emerged when a recently declassified document was given to the newspaper by a Senate staff employee, said one third of the army is capable of "planning, executing and sustaining counterinsurgency operations" but only with support from US and allied forces.
It's no wonder that Rumsfeld would rather break the law than report the data.
